Ricky Gervais’ new Netflix series it has amassed a big enough fan base for a season 2 renewal.
The series struck the perfect tone to make it Gervais’ definitive work, and it has also made a deep connection with millions of people going through the same issues as his character across the world. At its core, After Life is a show about what it takes to be happy. So, here are 10 Quotes From Ricky Gervais’ After Life That Will Make You Think.
Updated on June 13th, 2020 by Ben Sherlock: Ricky Gervais’ widely praised dramedy series After Life recently premiered its second season on Netflix. Season 2 has proven to be just as popular as its predecessor – maybe even more so – and the show has already been renewed for a third outing. The new episodes of the show were decidedly more emotional than the first batch, which came as a poignant reminder that grief isn’t a quick process, and it gets worse before it gets better. So, we’ve updated this list with a handful of quotes from the second season.
“I Feel Like I Should Help The People Who Helped Me.”
Tony became nicer in the second season of After Life, as he decided to return the favor to all the loved ones who helped him when he was grieving the loss of Lisa.
At one point, he says, “I realize that everyone’s struggling and I feel like I should help the people who helped me.” That’s what life is all about.
“Why Should You Be Embarrassed About Being Honest And Saying Something Nice?”
When Kath tells Matt that she likes him and is interested in dating him, he rejects her (mainly because he still hopes to get back together with his wife), and she feels embarrassed.
But as Tony points out, she has no reason to be embarrassed about that: “Why should you be embarrassed about being honest and saying something nice? He should be flattered.”
“Another Day. Gotta Keep It Together. Face The World.”
Tony says this to his dog Brandy one morning when he’s feeding her. This line could be a mantra for all of humankind to repeat when they get out of bed in the morning. We’re all dealing with problems and we all have to put those problems to one side in order to face the challenges that each day brings.
Life isn’t about curling up in a ball and letting your problems win; it’s about confronting the world in spite of those problems. And it helps if you have an adorable dog like Brandy to get you through the day.
“It Is Everything. Being In Love, I Mean.”
Tony didn’t realize how important it was to feel love until the woman he loved died. They say that absence makes the heart grow fonder, and that sentiment rings true.
In a way, that’s what Tony means when he says, “It is everything. Being in love, I mean. You just don’t need anything else. You realize that even more when they’re not around.”
“We’re All Screwed Up In One Way Or Another. It Sort Of Makes You Normal.”
There’s a deep truth to this line. Everybody is screwed up in their own way, so being screwed up doesn’t make you different, or some kind of outsider; it just makes you normal.
And what Tony means when he says that being screwed up makes you “normal” is that it makes you human. It’s fundamentally human to have flaws and make mistakes. It’s okay.
“Good people do things for other people. That’s it. The end.”
People get so hung up on what it takes to be a good person. They spend hours on end trying to figure out what they can do to make the world a better place or how they can have a positive impact on humanity to make them feel good about themselves.
And this is it. This is the be-all and end-all of what it takes to be a decent human being: do things for other people. Go out of your way to make other people’s lives a little bit easier, however you can, with whatever is within your capability, and you’ll be a good person by definition.
“Hope is everything.”
When we experience the darkest moments in our lives, it can seem like things will always be that bad and it’ll never get better. So, we have to just hope that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
This is what keeps Tony going throughout the six initial episodes of After Life. He holds out hope that he’ll be able to move on from losing the person he cared about the most in the world and get his life back on track. All he has is hope and he holds onto it for dear life. In many ways, hope really is everything.
“I still have my downs, but then life throws you these interesting little things, doesn’t it?”
At the beginning of the first season of After Life, Tony seems to have decided that he’ll never be happy again as long as his wife isn’t around anymore. At its core, this is a show about one man making an emotional connection with all of the people in his life.
He finds common ground with all of them, no matter how different they might seem on the surface – whether they’re a drug addict or a co-worker or another grieving spouse – and that’s what gives him the strength to keep going. By the end of the season, he’s tackled his depression, thanks to the “interesting little things” that life has thrown at him.
“You can’t feel sorry for yourself. You’ve got to keep going.”
This is something that we all tell ourselves, and something that we all know to be true, and yet it’s also something that’s easier said than done. If something tragic happens to us, like losing a spouse in the way After Life’s protagonist Tony did, it’s so easy to just slip into a stagnant state and wallow in our own misery.
It’s never healthy or positive to feel sorry for yourself, and it’ll never get you anywhere in of moving on from the pain, but it’s difficult not to. Keeping going isn’t anywhere near as easy as it sounds.
“You’re like a troll on Twitter. Just because you’re upset, everyone has to be upset.”
Trolling on social media has become a serious problem in the past few years, as pretty much anyone who puts anything online will be attacked or harassed or ridiculed. And this quote cuts down to the core of what’s going on with those trolls. They’re unhappy, so they want everyone else to be unhappy.
This is why Larson is able to rise above their vicious hate speech. It’s very simple: they’re angry, so they take it out on everyone online from behind the safety of a computer screen and try to make them as angry as they are.